IB is a bitch, or is it?
Well to be honest, and I know after I say this I’ll be target of prosecution of many IB Diploma Programme students, but IB is not bitch at all and I find it to be great educational system and most importantly, it works! Being student of United World College in Mostar is the best thing that happened to me in my life so far, and I don’t mean only because of the great people, cultural diversity and all other non-academic stuff, but academic as well. I’ll have to say that there are numerous reasons to like IB DP, and here’s why. [If you'd like to find some more on what I'm writing about, then you should visit the links listed on the bottom of the post.]
First of all, there is CAS which stands for Creativity, Action and (social) Service. It is great experience we have, especially when it comes about social service and it expands our horizons and gives us eye-opening experience that we’ll remember for long. It is compulsory to have 3 CASes they are so-called core CASes, each from one area – creativity, action and service and students are encouraged to take one more, additional. I have 3 core CASes, and 3 more additional ones. From action I took yoga and I seriously don’t regret taking it because I have problems with pain in lower back and this is helping me a lot, and it comes as good weekly exercise. When it comes about creativity, I have robotics, which is absolutely fabulous, the aim of the CAS is to build a robot for the US FIRST competition in Israel. I think this will be the third time we participated. I’m also part of Creative writing/Linking group where we attend all kinds of writing workshops and we also write articles for UWC web magazine. It is a lot of fun and it’s great improvement of grammatically correct and proper English. One more creativity CAS I’m taking part in is theater. It’s great explosion of amusement and fun, especially when we have projects of making theater play we perform in front of entire school. It’s a great CAS that leaves you a lot of space for imagination. But more than any creativity or action CAS, I’m most grateful for the social service CASes. My core one is Fun with elderly. It is volunteering in the nursery home, hanging out with old and helpless people from which some have disabilities such as blindness, deafness, or are not able to move. The saddest thing is how happy they are when they see us, because how lonely they are. I wish I could move in with them and hang out with them more often (we are doing more hours there than we’re supposed to). As the matter of fact, there is my article about this CAS in our school’s newsletter, you can find it in the list of links on the end of the post. The last CAS I’m active in is Special needs school. I think the name explains it all. We are volunteering in one special needs school in Mostar and it is great pleasure to be aware that tyou helped kids in needs. Well apparently I love these CASes more than I was aware, to make this post a bit shorter I’ll stop now (because there’s a lot more to write about) and I will promise I’ll talk more on CASes in the future.
If you think that would be it, you’re wrong. Second of all, there are only six subject. But don’t let the number to deceive you. It is not easy to deal with those six, believe me, there are 5 too many! Now the catch is that even though we have “only” six subjects, we get complete general education (I’ll explain later something called TOK) and also we do in-dept study of six subjects of our choice. Firt of all there are levels. At higher level you’re expected to learn more and you have stricter criteria than in standard level. You have to take 3 HL and 3 SL subjects, even though there are exceptions when students take 4HL and 3SL or in some cases 7 subjects. Subjects are chosen as follows: Group 1 – studies in language and literature, popular as A languages. Here, most of the students pick their native language but also if some students are really familiar with certain language and they’re ready to work hard, then they also take it from this group. Group 2 – language acquisition, popular as B and ab initio languages. Those are second languages and languages “from the beginning” what ab initio stands for. Group 3 – individuals and societies, also known as humanities – that’s where you can choose from psychology, history, economy, geography… Group 4 – experimental sciences – also known as natural sciences – physics, biology, chemistry… Group 5 – mathematics and computer science, where one can pick from different level of mathematics or computer science, obviously. And group 6 – the arts, where you can take theater or visual arts, or if you’re not exactly artisctic type then you cane take one more subject from any of subjects from group 1 through 5. Again you have huge freedom to choose whatever is your point of interest. Absolutely great, isn’t it. Well, FYI I took: Croatian A1 HL, English B HL, Mathematics HL, Psychology HL, Physics SL, Spanish ab inition SL…
Third thing I’ll write about is TOK. It is an special subject you’ll get in second term of first year and deal with it till the end of the first term of second year (I’m about to get it). That is the subject that gives you the rest of general knowledge and the good thing is that you don’t get the grades from it but all you can get is an additional point in your IB diploma if you were good and active student and did your essay right. So like I said, here one studies about general knowledge such as sources and variety of knowledge, types of proposition, perception: the methods of natural sciences: the problem of induction, the methods of social sciences, deductive reasoning: valid and invalid arguments, some common fallacies, the nature of mathematics, mathematics and the physical world, historical knowledge, value judgements: the grounds for moral, aesthetic and political judgements, religious belief, free will and determinism, theories of truth and knowledge. So yeah they cover most of our national program except for Latin, don’t they?!
So I could go on and on with these arguments that are pro IB. But there is only one contra, even though after you finish IB you put that one in pro group as well (that’s what alumni say), and that is – the huge quantity of work that has to be done. But yeah, that could also be a topic for itself and I might write soon about it so visit us regularly. Meanwhile, read more about what’s mentioned in the post:
- UWC in Mostar
- IB diploma programme
- UWC Mostar robotics team – Spirit of United Neretva (SUN)
- United Words, UWC student magazine
- UWC Mostar newsletter – December, 2011 (look for “Fun with elderly” article)
- US FIRST robotics
About Franjo Ivanković
Franjo is student of United World College in Mostar. He started this web site purely to play with CSS and HTML, but now using WordPress, he started a personal blog. In case you want to know more about this author, please visit his About me page.
If you like his work, then please feel free to share the link or comment! Share the love:
17 Responses to “IB is a bitch, or is it?”. I think you should join discussion ;)
Leave a Reply
Isaiah Vanderzanden
Posted on: January 7th, 2012 at 6:37 PM
very nice put up, i definitely love this web site, carry on it
Franjo Ivanković
Posted on: January 7th, 2012 at 6:44 PM
Thanks, I appreciate it and surely I will!
Carmine Patrone
Posted on: January 8th, 2012 at 3:28 AM
As Charly Sheen puts it, “WINNING!”
The Stars in Ancient History
Posted on: January 8th, 2012 at 6:24 AM
Thank you for this blog, it was just what I was searching for. There is so much information here, so I thank you so much for enlightening my mind.
Harga Murah Terbaik
Posted on: January 8th, 2012 at 6:26 AM
thank you very much admin:)
hd televisions
Posted on: January 8th, 2012 at 7:39 AM
Your weblog is superb. Thanks greatly for delivering loads of beneficial advice.
bedroom ideas
Posted on: January 8th, 2012 at 10:17 PM
HI Wow! what an idea ! What a concept !seriously loved it! this post was really Beautiful and fantastic .. Amazing …thank you!
Mysteries of Ancient Egypt
Posted on: January 13th, 2012 at 1:00 AM
I am surprised by the knowledge in this article post I found it to be not just incredibly motivating but it really also made me think. It is hard now a days to search out related information to ones search, so I am pleased that I found this article post
Danyell Marini
Posted on: January 21st, 2012 at 12:31 AM
Do you mind if I posted this article on my website? I would certainly give you credit and a link back to your webpage. Thank you, and please let me know here!
Curt Drafts
Posted on: January 22nd, 2012 at 6:11 AM
Excellent read. I just passed this onto a buddy who was doing some research on that. He just bought me lunch since I found it for him! So let me rephrase: Thanks for lunch!
escapsFaphard
Posted on: February 1st, 2012 at 5:24 AM
I respect your piece of work, thanks for all the informative blog posts.
Floyd Wicks
Posted on: February 1st, 2012 at 9:49 PM
I don’t usually comment but I gotta say thankyou for the post on this one : D.
car rental johannesburg
Posted on: February 3rd, 2012 at 9:40 AM
This is cool – ….)
Jay Riesen
Posted on: February 3rd, 2012 at 7:33 PM
It is really a great and useful piece of information. I’m satisfied that you simply shared this helpful information with us. Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
Get Laid
Posted on: February 4th, 2012 at 10:13 AM
WONDERFUL Post.thanks for share..extra wait .. …
Nina Scaman
Posted on: February 4th, 2012 at 6:40 PM
Hello! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be ok. I’m definitely enjoying your blog and look forward to new updates.
Clyde Tapija
Posted on: February 6th, 2012 at 4:38 AM
Dear blogger, a big heads up for providing this excellent article. I found it great. All the best, !